My life as a son

My life as a son. A true story (English: Patrimony. A True Story ) is an autobiographical novel by the American writer Philip Roth about the death of his father. It was published in 1991 by the New York publisher Simon & Schuster and was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in the biography / autobiography category the following year . The German translation by Jörg Trobitius was published in 1992 by Carl Hanser Verlag . While the original title Patrimony refers to the patrimony and the paternal inheritance, the German title is a modification of the 1974 novel My Life as a Man ( Mein Leben als Mann ).

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Philip Roth
Patrimony. A True Story
Link to the cover of the American first edition
The picture shows Herman Roth, the older son Sandy and Philip Roth (from back to front)
(Please note copyrights )

At the age of 86, Philip Roth's father, Herman Roth, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The son brings the diagnosis to the father and stands by him in the weeks and months that follow. The father shows the perseverance and the will to fight against the immutability of approaching death, which have characterized him throughout his life: as a successful representative of the Metropolitan Life insurance company , who as a second generation immigrant in latently anti-Jewish America in the middle of the 20th century never did has brought him to a great career, and as head of the family, who regulated the young son with intolerance and stubbornness before the latter developed intellectually beyond the petty-bourgeois father and yet remained connected to him for a lifetime in a mixture of shame and respect.

A biopsy weakens Herman Roth in such a way that the tedious operation of the tumor, which is already well advanced, seems illusory. Instead, the terminally ill opts for an operation on his cataract , which, with his eyesight, will bring him back to life for almost a year. But eventually the failure symptoms caused by the tumor increase more and more. Herman Roth is cared for by a nurse around the clock, alongside his partner Lil, who is always harassed by him. Philip Roth and his wife Claire Bloom also take care of the sick person. When the man pooped himself up, the son came closer to his father than ever before to clear up this disgusting and shameful situation. Philip Roth hesitates, his father to fill out a living will to move, and then, the former representative of how rational experiencing life insurance has learned to deal with sensitive needs.

When Philip Roth, about to have a heart attack , had to undergo bypass surgery at the age of 56 , he kept silent about the hospital stay and was scolded for it by his father, who wanted to help his son. But at the following meeting, the father has already visibly broken down. A few weeks later, Herman Roth dies after his son decides not to plug him into any life-extending devices. In a dream, his father appears to him as a badly damaged, unmanned warship that is drifting towards a coast where Roth is an evacuated orphan. After his funeral, the father appears to his son again in the Jewish shroud and complains that he would have preferred to wear a secular suit for eternity. Philip Roth understands this as an allusion to the book about his father that he is working on and realizes that in his dreams he will always be the little son over whom the father is in court.

interpretation

In contrast to his other works, including the partially autobiographical ones such as The Facts , Deception or Operation Shylock , Philip Roth does not play any literary games with the reader in Patrimony . There are no deceptions or indications that the author cannot be trusted. Instead, according to David Gooblar, the novel is "a sincere account of the illness and death of a father by a loving and loyal son." This makes the book very touching for Paul McDonald, but from a literary critical point of view less interesting and productive for research than Roth's other works. Mark Shechner comments that narrative masks and dissolving realities are appropriate as long as an author writes primarily about himself. "But your father is your father , and postmodernism and magical realism are just not enough."

Shechner sees patrimony entirely in the tradition in 19th century literature, which applies not only to the stylistic accuracy and conscientiousness of the description, but also to the theme that evokes Victorian ideas of fate, duty and character, as well as a patriarchal legacy, that is passed on from father to son. Roth accurately records his father's dying process so that he can be recreated when he has finally left him. The central sentence is: “You must not forget anything.” The memoirs of Herman Roth are spread out as if in a ceremony, a funeral oration, a public farewell to a father whom the son did not always understand but always loved. Shechner calls the novel a kaddish from the son for the father. However, since both father and son were secular Jews , it is a kaddish outside the Jewish liturgy that worships no God, but only the father.

According to Hana Wirth-Nesher, Roth draws parallels between his father and European Judaism . Herman Roth's fight against the disease and the reminiscences of his past in Newark are linked in his son's imagination with the Holocaust and the Jewish culture of remembrance . Three symbols are at the center of the novel: The tefillin that Herman Roth exposes in the changing room of the YMHA instead of passing it on to his sons, represent the loss of Jewish tradition. The shaving bowl of his father, the Jewish immigrant from Europe, which Herman Roth bequeathed to his son, stands for the removal of the long beards typical of Orthodox Judaism and thus a social adjustment to the new home. The actual inheritance from the father to the son, however, is his excrement, in the purification of which the roles between father and son are reversed and the son takes care of the old man. They stand for the filth of which man is made, and thus instead of a spiritual-religious bond for the physical-biological connection between father and son.

In the key scene of cleaning up the father's excrement, David Gooblar also sees a central ethical problem of autobiographical writing: When an author writes down truths that affect third parties, he exposes them to the reader without them having any control over their representation. Towards the end of the novel, Roth raises the very dilemma that he dresses in the question of how his father is to be buried. While the author would prefer to bury his father naked (which he does as a writer by showing off his father in all his vulnerability), he opts for a traditionally Jewish shroud. But his father, who appears to him in a dream, protests against the robe in which his son has put him for all eternity. In a figurative sense, he takes a stand against the literary image that Philip Roth designed of him and made public with the publication of the book.

expenditure

Philip Roth: Patrimony. A true story . Simon & Schuster, New York 1991, ISBN 0-671-70375-7 .
Philip Roth: My life as a son. A true story . From the American by Jörg Trobitius. Hanser, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-446-16012-4 .
Philip Roth: My life as a son. A true story . From the American by Jörg Trobitius. Dtv, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-11965-9 .

literature

David Gooblar: "Patrimony" and the "Unseemliness" of Writing . In: The Major Phases of Philip Roth . Continuum, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-4411-6970-9 , pp. 112-116.
Mark Shechner: Vou Must Not Forget Anything . In: Up Society's Ass, Copper. Rereading Philip Roth . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2003, ISBN 0-299-19350-0 , pp. 126-131.
Hana Wirth-Nesher: Roth's Autobiographical Writings . In: Timothy Parrish (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-68293-0 , pp. 164-167.

Individual evidence

^ "A faithful account of a father's illness and death by a loving and loyal son". In: David Gooblar: The Major Phases of Philip Roth . Continuum, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-4411-6970-9 , p. 112.
^ Paul McDonald: Philip Roth . Greenwich Exchange, London 2003, ISBN 1-871551-72-2 , p. 38.
↑ “But your father is your father , and postmodernism and magic realism simply won't do.” In: Mark Shechner: Up Society's Ass, Copper. Rereading Philip Roth . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2003, ISBN 0-299-19350-0 , p. 127.
↑ Mark Shechner: Up Society's Ass, Copper. Rereading Philip Roth . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2003, ISBN 0-299-19350-0 , pp. 126-128.
↑ Hana Wirth-Nesher: Roth's Autobiographical Writings . In: Timothy Parrish (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-68293-0 , pp. 164-167.
↑ David Gooblar: "Patrimony" and the "Unseemliness" of Writing . In: The Major Phases of Philip Roth . Continuum, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-4411-6970-9 , pp. 114-116.

[1] "A faithful account of a father's illness and death by a loving and loyal son". In: David Gooblar: The Major Phases of Philip Roth . Continuum, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-4411-6970-9 , p. 112.

[2] Paul McDonald: Philip Roth . Greenwich Exchange, London 2003, ISBN 1-871551-72-2 , p. 38.

[3] “But your father is your father , and postmodernism and magic realism simply won't do.” In: Mark Shechner: Up Society's Ass, Copper. Rereading Philip Roth . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2003, ISBN 0-299-19350-0 , p. 127.

[4] Mark Shechner: Up Society's Ass, Copper. Rereading Philip Roth . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2003, ISBN 0-299-19350-0 , pp. 126-128.

[5] Hana Wirth-Nesher: Roth's Autobiographical Writings . In: Timothy Parrish (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-68293-0 , pp. 164-167.

[6] David Gooblar: "Patrimony" and the "Unseemliness" of Writing . In: The Major Phases of Philip Roth . Continuum, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-4411-6970-9 , pp. 114-116.